Looks like DERM is the EPA, the ones who protect the fruit bats. And DPI&F is now DEEDI. All those organisations are in conflict with each other. One will call a weed noxious and sue you if you don't do something about it, and another will say it is protected and sue you if you get rid of it. I agree - I reckon name changes give an organisation a sense of satisfaction that they are earning their wages by spending all that time instigating it and repainting signs, printing paperwork, and confusing everyone. Anyway, the DEEDI might send an entymologist out if you asked them, but I doubt the bee inspectors would come this far. Unless of course you found a mite or cerana colony.

I think Slicko pointed out that honey sampling is no longer mandatory, but you can elect to send a sample if you are concerned. You need to sign that you understand how to recognise AFB. I didn't know that AFB exists in most hives, though, Slicko. Where did you read this? Do you think it can be latent in a beehive?

Phil, some people here have caucasians and they are bred on an island in queensland, but the mates are going back to italians. We don't have cold snaps that encourage cold weather bees to lay down honey. I just think that queens that are raised in hotter weather might suit here better, rather than somewhere like Kangaroo Island, which is practically in Antarctica.The mate suggested the other day that feral bees might also lay down less honey at a time, but put it down more consistently. I don't know. Conditions here might be more to blame. The weak hive was once the strongest, but they hadn't been requeened for 5 years and used to chase you round the shed, but requeening might have been the death of them.

Lone, I got afb in one hive about 6 or more months ago and in my research I noted this claim. Can't tell where I read it but it was in more than one place. I think there was an assertion that strong colonies were able to keep it in check but I cant be sure now. I shook my hive out which was what used to be done to manage the problem.. destroyed all the brood and put the girls back onto new foundation and frames.. have not seen it since (fingers crossed)

That's how I know that you'll never get an inspector into your aipary because they weren't interested in looking at my afb even after I said I was not going to destroy my colony

Slicko

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hi the Irene bark narrow leaf at koogan were budded up in February , they broke in July.watch some of the Irene bark .wont produce much pollen .i found i had to give Patty's as i noticed hardly any coming in.we had hardly any rain at home since may. had no trees set buds her so we had no flower in the spring, came home her week ago from Brisbane i noticed on the creek a few Cooley flowering.last year with the Cooley we had shower and the buds dropped off.i ended up having to feed ,till i found another area to put them

Sounds like you've had the same experiences I've had! When the bloodwood came out in Jan, of course it rained continuously for 6 weeks so we lost that, then it was so dry the ironbark buds just got reabsorbed. Now the bloodwood is budded again. We've had storms the last two nights - the same time the rains started last year. If it sticks at storms, things might be right. There are a couple of black butts with a few blossoms out in the creek, but not enough for a proper snack.

lo hi when i went over to bees just before ex mas ,i noticed plenty cabbage gum flowering.they say their miner tree for nectar but grate for poll an.i brought the honey flora of qld ,find it good reading.at moment I'm trying out the diatomite for hive Beatles i made my traps out c d cases i broke off the lip at the front of the case on the bottom of case used PVC glue brushed the diatomite on the glue.has any one used this stuff.it the first time had beattel. haven't had them at home,had few problems with meat ants.had to get hives off the ground put sump oil on my hive stand legs.before i did this they cleaned up to of my week hives.

And now for an update on the roller coaster ride of beekeeping in adverse circumstances.

My poor weak original hive is still barely surviving. The problems started when I requeened. The numbers constantly dropped until the queen stopped laying altogether and the bees replaced her, as I now know. Two months after I reported multiple eggs in each cell, the same is still occurring. There are very few single eggs, and up to 4 or 5 in most others. Some cells have 2 larvae..I suppose things equalise somehow and one bee ends up hatching from these cells. Maybe someone knows what exactly happens, or if fewer cells have viable larvae? The other thing is that there is only brood covering half of each side of a single frame. I tried to stimulate laying with feed, but I've stopped that now. I could have put in a queen cell from another hive to replace that one, but at that time, there were exactly 2 drones to share amongst 7 hives. I was advised to wait and try and get a commercial queen. They are not available yet, so I am waiting and encouraging the little bees to keep breathing until help arrives. As Little John said - It's a great learning experience! :rant:

And now for a beekeeper's confession. I murdered my queen - the feral cutout queen, the one Kathy advised me to hang onto, because they usually do well..the one which was starting to pick up, and make things seem promising again....the one I cared for and molly-coddled, gave feed to, increased the hive size from a 4 frame, to 8, to 10... It happened like this. Things were looking good, so on the spur of the moment, without proper planning and preparation, I decided to transfer from the 8 to 10 frame. My off-sider was out mustering, so I just went ahead. There were bees everywhere, and a lot on the sides especially. How I messed up a simple task. My off-sider's brother drove up on the bike to see what I was doing and give a couple of puffs of smoke. "What's that on your arm?" he says. Well, what does one do if someone says what's that on your arm, or your nose, or whatever? In short, whatever it was, it got swiped. Whether it was her majesty or not, we will never know. But a week later the hive was filled with queen cells. And very few drones about, too. I now know to seek out the queen first. What a lot of learning experiences. Well, today is about day 24. I haven't disturbed them yet. But in a few days I'll look for eggs.

with the 1st hive, is that brood all drone brood? i'm wondering if you have no queen in there, and have laying workers. the other thing is that if they replaced her and she was poorly mated, or is a dink, you aren't going to have any build up.

to bad about the other queen, but sounds like they are going to replace her without problem.

keep us posted!

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There is no drone brood in that first hive, just a few workers. It is not hard to spot a queen on one frame with not too many bees. The beek who has hives out the back here thought the problem might be from poor mating.

Hi Lone, I though every bee keeper and his mongrel dog would be raking in honey by the bucket loads up north, have you got any scrub timber around your way?, driving back from Cairns the other day everything looked green, so I reckoned there must have been plenty to keep the girls happy. Not sure about this, but I thought I heard about someone in Townsville was breeding queens, I got a new queen about a month ago, not sure where she come from, but I will be chasing a couple more after the rain stops, so if I get them I will post where they come from, may be of some help to you. I not sure if that be the queen crawling up your arm, I am always careful not to squeeze her to bits when replacing frames.I see you were mustering, do you use bikes? all horse back from where I come from. Lek

hi lone, don't no if you get the Australasian beekeeper .plenty queen breeders in their they send them express post .that how i got my queens they let me no i let the mail contractor no he give me call on two way i go and get them before meat ant have a feed.

The scrub is naturally a little sparse round here - nothing at all like the rainforests down the far north coast. In fact, our closest rainforest a couple of hundred km north is called a dry rainforest! Mates have their bees in near virgin scrub and do very well, but I don't know any graziers with land like that. Grazing and government land clearing policies in the past have compounded the trouble I suppose. Whole areas of grey box scrub have been cleared not too far away. The most common tree would be the bloodwood, then the iron bark. The bats have found our neem trees and I think they are also making short work of the buds on the bloodwood round about. There are also teatrees and melaleuka in the creek, which have been the best honey flow. In the paddock there are lots of variety of timber, but just not great quantities or frequent flowerers. There is sandalwood, lollypop trees, piggy apples, suplejacks, grey box, black wattle, dead finish, native blackberry, blackbutt gums, poplar gums (I think), leuceana, beefwood, broadleaf ironbark, and others I can't recall, and a couple of chiney apples that survived the spray.I would love to know about queens in Townsville. It would be close enough to drive to without going through aussie post (westmar, our local post office calls us when they arrive). They would be most suited to the climate here, too. I do want italians, though..I know there is a breeder not far away who only has caucasians. I have a couple of names of queen breeders, but I don't get that magazine, westmar. Speaking of rain, are you getting that big storm in Mackay tonight, Lek?Since the blokes got their 4 wheeler chestnut stallions, they've hung their bridles up. They are getting a bit long in the tooth. They wouldn't ride on wet ground anyway, and I don't ride by myself. There are a couple of quiet horses here, but there was one brood mare that bred half a dozen girthy yang yangs. We broke in every one of them before we realised they were descended from a famous line of Queensland buckjumpers. Two of them threw me, and one ended up in a rodeo. Do you have cattle there, Lek?

hi out her the heat is dry early in summer it was in the high 40deg.i got queens from dewar corporation 2157 lake moogerah rd kalbar Q 4309 [07] 54635633.its humid down that way, queens done all right out this way .they used have a webpage.i think they around a red back plus postages.when i was chasing queens late in the season they helped me out.they are nice queens real yellow Italians very ca rm on the frame.i don't see any Queen breeders from up north advertising in this mag.

I would like to announce that I have the dubious honour of having my bees referred to by the local beek of 40 years experience as having "more problems than I have ever seen".

My weak hive is picking up a little in town, actually under his TLC and watchful eye, and the strong hive here has actually got real live drones and a super of about 90% capped honey, the first flow for nearly a year. Now to the other two.

This is the story of Hive a and Hive B. Hive a was the one that superceded as you can read above, and Hive B the one whose queen I lost.

Hive a was once a powerful but undisciplined hive, ruled by a mean queen whose subjects would taunt and try to kill any strangers, and in fact would flock to a disturbance some distance off, and fly for many metres at an innocent intruder to their territory. Well, everyone knows that such a queen will not long be appreciated. Her fragile dictatorship was soon overthrown by one greater than her, and a new queen was introduced into the realm. This queen, however, was put off by the instability of the city where she was placed - and perhaps the imports and produce were too scanty for her high southern tastes - and after a short time she ceased all reproduction. Soon there was no new labour in the city, and the workers could not keep up with all the building, nursing, food gathering and guarding tasks. The kingdom became all but deserted. However, there was one weak egg, one of the last to be produced, and from it arose a decent but fragile queen to replace the barren queen. This weak queen was not taught her job, and in fact, had no one to seek advice from. She tried for some time, but continued for many months to lay multiple eggs in each cell. Only a handful of young hatched, barely enough to maintain and protect the hive's dwelling. So the greater one then, sadly, had her executed and replaced by a good queen, one who had proven her worth and ability. Yet the subjects were still faithful to the poor weak queen, who had tried hard and whom they had tolerated, and banished the good but foreign queen from the hive. The greater one was sad, and left on a journey, and was saddened on the journey by the thought of this once magnificent hive, now nearly in ruins, with no ruler to keep it stable and alive. On returning from the journey, weary and disheartened, the greater one discovered that minutes previously, a wise authority had pillaged a nearby kingdom and kidnapped many youth, and brought them into the dreary sad hive, enough, in fact, so that another queen could rise up and claim and rebuild this city. Alas, though, the subjects were by now confused and suspicious, and instead of appointing a queen, they crowned a commoner, a simple worker, and she could only produce poor dumb males, who would not be able to continue the hive, who could not work or build, and who were quickly diminishing the supplies in the warehouses. Frantically, for this was a dismal situation, a plea of help was sent out, and another wise man came. They were some who did not like the commoner, and who tried to create a new queen themselves, but in vain, for you cannot create a queen from a male. But the nests they built stood ready, and the wise man gathered an unhatched female child from the nearby kingdom, and placed her into the waiting cradle. In a few days, they sealed up the cradle and waited for her to emerge. The commoner who had risen up in desperation, saw that she had been rejected, and went into hiding.

This is where we leave her, for this poor struggling hive has been untouched since, so no one knows if she emerged as a queen, or if she has been accepted, or in fact, what fortune awaits this proud and patient hive.

The story of Hive B is a similar one. Taken from a tree, these bees were adjusting to life closer to the ground, and the queen became happy, with water nearby, and enough honey to harvest so that all her young could be fed. They were becoming prosperous, and soon were in need of a larger dwelling. The greater one, who was not wise, assisted the bees into a larger space, but the queen was heavy with eggs and could no longer fly, and fell to the ground; and though she tried to crawl back, she became weak and disoriented, and soon died outside the safety of her home. The gatherers panicked, and gathered much pollen, storing it all on the shelves. The nurses tried to raise a queen, but perhaps she did not survive her nuptial flight, for she did not return to the hive. It is sometimes possible to buy queens, like buying slaves from a blackbirder, if you know someone who might know someone else who is perhaps a queen trader. There was one queen left, for it was not the season of trading queens, but this queen was bought and given to the hive. They had recently suffered much trauma, losing two queens in succession, so mourning over their own queens, they did not want an exotic queen. They banished her, and continued to mourn, and this is when the greater one left on her journey. The greater one was sad for this hive, for she had not meant to kill the first queen, and had tried to appease them with a new young queen, and saw that they would not survive without more help. When the greater one returned form her journey, she saw that the wise man was just about to look into the hive, and he observed also that there was no queen. Take some young from my hive at the river, he said. So the next morning, the greater one broke in and kidnapped unborn babies and eggs from which to rear a queen. The hive accepted this, for they saw that it would be their own queen who would look after them and keep them in order. They raised a queen, and she was happy, for there were many wild flowers and weeds about, and it had rained, but not too much. Some beetle invaders came, but the greater one helped to defend the hive, and the beetles left, for they don't like the hard dry gound.

This is where we will leave Hive B, for the queen is still happy, and her bees are working hard, and pleased that they have a good queen again. The guards stay inside and stand backwards with their arrows poised, to protect their kingdom. There are only four buildings in this city, but there is enough room, for now.